“An Impression of Ames by One Who Was Never There” from The Green Gander May 1925 issue.

The page titled “An Impression of Ames by One Who Was Never There,” published in the May 1925 issue of The Green Gander, presents a caricatured and disjointed visual map of Ames and Iowa State College. The illustration assembles fragments of student life and local culture, including references that would have been immediately recognizable to students in the 1920s but which today feel obscure. A ship bearing a flag labeled “ISC” which was the former name, Iowa State College and it also includes text saying “The Prexi,” a slang term for a president. Elsewhere, the drawing alludes to student traditions such as the “Moving Up” ceremony, where freshmen ceremonially burned their required beanies at the end of the academic year. Also represented is “the Dinky,” a small train that once transported passengers between downtown Ames and the college campus, and WOI, Iowa State’s pioneering, college-owned radio station. Together, these elements construct a humorous but fragmented impression of campus culture as imagined by someone who admits never to have visited Ames.